Cheap Chupney!

There we were, having a sandwich, in BH24, Ringwood the other Tuesday.. This is one of my favourite places for a snack.
"Oh no!" said Bob "not another picture of me eating!" He had a cheese toastie. I had peanut butter and banana on sourdough, drizzled with honey and raisins. It was delicious, if rather sweet!
But they have a bookshelf full of cookbooks on the wall behind the table, and you can read whilst waiting for your food.

I took down "The Modern Preserver" by Kylee Newton. It was so interesting - covering all sorts of preserving methods - from chutney to kimchi, jam to gin! Lots of practical details, clear instructions,and lovely photographs. Having been given so many tomatoes and apples lately, I was interested in the tomato chutney recipe. This is the recipe that started Kylee off [read her 2015 Guardian article here]

I took out my phone and photographed the page!

I did tweak the recipe a little- I was determined to make the chutney with as little outlay as possible. I had the tomatoes and apples already. I bought a bag of onions on the way home.
I didn't have any dark brown sugar - so I substituted with two thirds molasses and one third demerara [I cannot remember which recipe I bought the molasses for last year, but the jar needed using up] 
I had no lime, so just used lemon. And I don't like chilis, but put in ½tsp of garlic&chili salt.

The recipe makes 6-7 350ml jars. So I used half quantities and filled 4 smaller jars.
I had never made tomato chutney before, and the instruction to salt and drain the fruits made a lot of sense, when I realised just how much liquid came out of 500g of toms.
It bubbled away beautifully in my Le Creuset.
Before long I had four jars cooling down happily.
The texture and consistency looks good.
It will be hard to wait four weeks until it has matured!

Kylee says this is a good "Breakfast chutney". I don't usually have chutney at breakfast - its usually brown sauce or ketchup. But then, I have not purchased brown sauce since 2017 - I always make my own now, using Gil Mellor's recipe, The chief ingredient of that is leftover chutney.  So maybe I will try this one in October, when Bob cooks one of his legendary Saturday Morning Breakfasts for me!
Four jars of chutney, and all I had to purchase was a  few onions. Very satisfactory! Thank you to all my gardening friends who continue share their lovely produce.